Posts by Dani

checking if MBAMService.exe is abnormal in Task Manager

What does that mean?? Abnormal in what way?

That tool only covers a very tiny subset of jQuery functionality, so wouldn't be useful since my intent is to be able to ditch the library. I guess I'll just be here waiting for jQuery 4!

We used to use Sharepoint way back in the day when DaniWeb had one of those Microsoft subscriptions that gave you access to all license keys. I forget what it used to be called but they don't have it anymore and haven't for many years, as far as I know.

Edit: ChatGPT reminded me that it was called a TechNet Subscription.

A little more information: I had a variable called $uri that I assumed was a URI, and so decided to be smart and add a sanitization wrapper around it to ensure it was a valid URI. It turned out that the variable was not meant to store a fully-formed URI but actually only part of one, and therefore always failed the check.

It should be fixed now. Unfortunately it's been broken for quite awhile and I didn't realize it. It broke on the 5th of the month when I went through all the code and mass-added a wrapper that ran some sanitization stuff. So sorry about that! Either way, it's fixed now.

Thanks for the heads up! I’m able to reproduce it and I’ll look into it shortly. I’m currently still in bed.

CDNs such as Cloudflare offer hotlink protection via a toggle switch you could enable.

But, yeah, the primary benefit of hotlink protection is that a website doesn't upload images to your site, and then include them in their own site without having to pay for the bandwidth of hosting the images. Just make sure that if you turn on hotlink protection for, say, your logo, you don't include a hotlink to that logo in your marketing emails, or the image will be broken. I suggest only enabling it for an uploads folder.

Marking this question as solved. Thanks all!

I know that this is probably a hopeless question, but are there any automated scripts that would reliably and automagically convert my thousands upon thousands of lines of jQuery code into native Javascript?

Siri is an abomination

Is it? I've never so much as touched an Apple computer so I have no opinion on that whatsoever.

Oh, yes. That's well known. Apple should be embarrassed. In fact, they recently fired the head of the Siri team.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/20/apple-puts-vision-pro-exec-in-charge-of-siri-in-exec-shakeup/

So you're telling me Sam Web Studio fails at this?

I just came across this now (yes, I admit 5 years too late), but yeah, every SEO worth anything is constantly in search of better tools to track the latest algorithm updates. And this is still true 5 years later too! :-P

Barry Schwartz is my go-to: https://www.seroundtable.com/category/google-updates

I'll also second Mozcast because that's what Barry always tends to reference.

This is something that I've really struggled with ever since DaniWeb stopped being able to afford Google Ads. Social media tends to not work as well for us because most of the questions people ask on here are so niche that they really are only relevant when people do a very specific Google search (to hopefully find our content) because they happen to have the same or a similar question.

Luckily, there are a lot of technical SEO things that you can do (optimize your Javascript, site navigation and structure, etc.) to help rank in Google, which is of course free. Building backlinks are more and more difficult these days, so I don't have any great strategies that have worked for me there, unfortunately.

Anyone have any good ways of building backlinks without purchasing them? (Which is against Google's terms anyways).

I think social media like Instagram or Facebook works wonders for those of you with e-commerce sites who are selling a tangible product, or even selling a service where you can show off the results.

I have seen too much code written by self-taught programmers who, through ignorance, eschewed good design.

While that's very, very true, that's [unfortunately] not typically what people come to DaniWeb asking for help with. Many people unfortunately don't care about doing things right, but just well enough to work. As long as it gets the job done, I suppose.

NuGG: So sorry about hijacking your thread with this whole discussion about the demise of DaniWeb! I am glad, however, that you were able to get your problem figured out, and I'll mark this question as solved. Thanks for sharing your update.

Salem linked to it (thank you!), but it seems succinct enough that I'm going to include it here in case the link were to disappear in the future.

# qemu-img snapshot [ -l | -a snapshot | -c snapshot | -d snapshot ] filename

-l: lists all snapshots
-a: reverts the image to the snapshot
-c: creates a snapshot
-d: deletes the snapshot

I don't understand your question. What is a project center? Something like Slack or Github that can be used to help manage a team working on a software project? Probably the wrong question for me since I'm a one-woman team. Is this a homework question? I'm so confused why you're asking this.

Probably this is me just venting more than anything, but has anyone had success in getting in touch with someone from Cloudflare billing?

Cloudflare recently charged us a boatload of money for Argo accelerated traffic that was the result of a DDoS attack. Cloudflare was able to detect on their end there was a DDoS attack going on at the time. I tried submitting a billing ticket a week ago and there have been no responses to it as of yet. Pretty frustrating.

I can see your rationale, but I don't necessarily agree with a separate table in the database for every month. There are much more elegant ways of handling that use case these days, especially in MySQL. You didn't specify how long ago this was.

Either way, still hoping a MySQL expert can come along and answer my question here.

Hi Steve. Welcome to DaniWeb. What brings you here?

Creating and removing database indexes is very complex and is not a matter of let's throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

When working with big data, loads and loads of thought goes into each and every index. Nearly all indexes can work, but not as well as others might, and having too many indexes on a table can slow down inserts and updates to a drag. Having the exact correct indexes can lead to huge performance wins.

For us, it takes 12+ hours to add an index to a table, during which for most of that time we need to bring the database offline, as it's too resource intensive to add an index to a table that is concurrently being hit with requests. Removing an index that is being used, even if it's sub-optimal, can easily take down the server and break replication. The last time I mistakingly removed an index that was being used, we had 2 days of downtime.

BTW I've spoken with a former Microsoft Engineer. He also agrees OneDrive is an abomination.

I’ve spoken to several current and former Apple engineers who agree that Siri is an abomination.

I already read that article, as well as related ones such as this and this but it all went above my head and didn’t seem to directly answer my question.

For example, when I currently run select * from sys.schema_unused_indexes; I get a list of indexes. Is that list incomplete or straight-up wrong?

But programming basics are still something people need help with, and the basics have not changed appreciably over my career.

They sure have changed appreciably during my career! But maybe that's because my career is in web development, and the web, and the technologies that power the web, have changed a lot over the past 25 years. Heck, 25 years ago we were talking HTML and perl cgi scripts! Usenet groups and AOL and Compuserve before that.

Probably a silly question, but is Argo Smart Routing (the usage-based product) only applicable to content served at the origin? Otherwise, does it makes sense to be spending money to find a more efficient path between the end-user and the edge? Isn't the edge already pretty darn close?

As some general background, that's the syntax to delete an index, of course, but MySQL knows if an index is used because, well, it's the one that uses it, and it tracks that stuff internally. Now on to my question ... ;)

Which digital marketing tactics gave you the most ROI early on?

Purchasing backlinks, by far. But it was 2003 and Google didn't have a policy against doing it at the time. We live in a completely different world today. I wouldn't recommend it.

Are there any tools or platforms that worked especially well for lean teams?

DaniWeb has never grown beyond a few employees, and a decent team of moderators, but we've always communicated effectively between email and whatever IM client is trendy: AIM, Skype, FB Messenger, Slack, etc.

How do you prioritize when time and money are both tight?

There's the mantra: Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid having to work 40 hours a week. Put time into doing everything and learning everything there is to do! This way, when you finally have money to hire people, you have some experience in doing what you're hiring for.

Good luck!

(where people abandoned us for sites like Stack Overflow)

But there are still a few dinosaurs around who can answer some programming questions.

Not to knock ya, but I think another part of the problem is that all that's left are dinosaurs who aren't necessarily skilled at the most trendiest things these days. There's only so much people can reminisce in a forum about punchcards.

As a macOS user these days, does Windows not have a find tool? /confuzzled

OK, so I found this blog post by the one and only Percona, that says that I can simply do select * from sys.schema_unused_indexes; which does give me a list of indexes. However, it says it's based on having:

update performance_schema.setup_consumers set enabled = 'yes' where name = 'events_waits_current';
update performance_schema.setup_instruments set enabled = 'yes' where name = 'wait/io/table/sql/handler';

The second one was already set to yes but the first one was not. What does it do? Why is it required?

How can I identify and delete unused MySQL indexes? I have a large table that has somehow accumulated way too many indexes over the years, and I'd now like to identify and delete indexes that are no longer used by the application.

Then there’s me, whose expertise is mostly limited to technical SEO and PHP these days, I’m afraid. Ugh, the brain fog is real.

Been coming on daniweb for 20 years, was always such a great place for help and advice. Last time I visited was 4-5 years ago and I noticed then it was getting quieter. Somewhat sorry to see the state of things now, these "most recent" threads are all so old! Where is everyone? I shall try stop by here more often and contribute!

You are very much appreciated. Thank you for your devotion to our community over all the years! Unfortunately, I started dealing with some health issues that left me bedbound in 2020 and 2021. By 2023, I had been diagnosed with a form of terminal cancer among other things. It’s been really hard, but I’m doing my best to keep the website up. In other news, the reason for the increase in SEO content is because that’s my personal passion, and DaniWeb’s reputation in the SEO space (I’ve been speaking at SEO conferences for 20 years) has transcended its reputation in the programming space (where people abandoned us for sites like Stack Overflow).

I find it vertigo-inducing to be sitting!! I simply cannot handle when what I see simulates me moving (e.g. walking in a room), but my physical body is not moving. It's fine if things are moving around me, but if I'm meant to be walking, I need to be physically walking in order to not get sick.

Reminds me of the decision to pack up and move from New York to California. Best decision I've ever made.

I checked out your website and notice you're using the particles javascript at the bottom of the page. Many, many years ago, we used to use that as well, until we discovered it was causing some people's web browsers to crash, and for others, made the webpage unresponsive for users with slower computers.

I would highly suggest that, instead, you use a vector animation in a loop that can provide the same desired effect, as opposed to this javascript that has to continuously calculate the position and vectors of each of the individual particles and connections between them. That's a lot of wasted processing power.

some other VR gear

Was it not a Quest or Vision Pro? I didn’t realize there were any other quality VR headsets on the market.

Also, make sure to always play with plenty of space around you. I can’t speak for the Vision Pro, but the Quest is very good at immediately letting you know if you or your arms are approaching out of the gaming boundary and immediately shows you your surroundings.

Yeah, 4 new members with consecutive user ID's, smelling like sock-puppet accounts.

I realized that after I posted. I’m on my phone on the sofa so it wasn’t as easy to tell. Although I still can’t see the motivation.

Edit: Nevermind. Perhaps they were trying to improve their member reputation/quality score?? (Won’t work because you need reputation to give reputation.)

Oddly, you are required to go through an hour long tutorial/demo at the Apple Store before they will sell you a Vision Pro. I haven’t had the patience as of yet.

Is the Apple Vision Pro worth it if I already have an Oculus Quest?

I'm not a big gamer, but I have my entire wedding recorded in VR, and I love watching mini-movies and shows in 3D VR. My husband is into things like Red Matter. I honestly don't remember if I have a Quest 2 or 3.

OMG, I can't with the dad jokes.

Better late than never! Thanks for your post. It looks like it's really helped a few people already.

Presumably bumping every "coinflip" post to spam their URL

Nothing wrong with that!! I'll take a trillion helpful posts if all someone wants in exchange is a free signature link back to their website (that only shows up for logged in members, so no SEO incentive).

In fact, my site is super fast (92% on mobile and 99% on desktop performance according to Google Page Speed).

I see that this question has already been solved. However, I do feel inclined to ask: If you're saying your site is already super fast, why are you also saying you're struggling to make your site faster, it's driving you crazy, and to please help you?

Either way, seems like a moot point.

It has to do with the type of website that is trying to gain traffic. However, for the most part, content sites are pretty frustrated that AI bots are scraping all of their content and then using it to directly answer a searcher's question, without the searcher ever having to visit the website. This is especially tough on content-based websites with high quality, well-researched content that generate revenue through advertising. Money and effort was put into creating the content and it's being served up to searchers for free.

However, for many of these content-based websites, DaniWeb included, we're in a Catch-22 because we still want to rank by search engines, especially sites whose business models rely on almost all traffic being driven from search. In order to appear in Google's search results, we are required to allow Googlebot to scrape all of our content and use it for its AI engine.

Yes, it is. Cache settings are irrelevant? I was really just wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue, and what they did to fix it?

Hello and welcome!

Hello Dwight,

I had already checked out that link, but from what I can gather, Cloudflare does not consider individual resources (such as fonts, images, etc.) as "assets". My understanding is than an asset is the entire HTML file used to generate the page, complete with inline, base64 encoded resources.

As you may know, yuo can customize the error pages in Cloudflare, such as for a WAF block, etc.

For some reason, since the switchover to the new error pages dashboard, the custom font I always use isn't working.

I can see that it converted https://cdn.daniweb.com/font.woff into inline base64 for the @font-face CSS, which sounds about right. However, it's not working for whatever reason, and I have no idea why.

Has anyone heard of anything like this before?

Jim, I have not used Windows in a very, very long time, but can you not configure Windows to store My Documents on D? I'm quite sure that you can, if I remember correctly?

https://superuser.com/questions/1725456/wha-cant-i-move-my-documents-folder

• Microsoft Office (for macOS)

And then to manage DaniWeb:

• PhpStorm
• Remote Desktop Manager
• Viscosity
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Given that jQuery is a front-end JavaScript library, its goal is to make writing your front end JavaScript easier and quicker than writing native JavaScript. However, as it is written on top of native JavaScript, there’s nothing it can’t do that native JavaScript ultimately cannot. It just might take a whole bunch more lines of code in native JS. So that’s the allure of jQuery. I don’t suppose that’s changed with jQuery 4.